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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

You seem to be anonymous here on HN, why don't you use your full name instead if you have nothing to hide and you're not intentionally deceptive?

No, privacy doesn't work like that. Even people who are not trying to deceive others are deserving of privacy as well.

Most of my accounts (except one) on the internet are anonymous, as I don't want people to tie anything I do for fun on the internet to my real-life persona. It doesn't mean that I want to deceive people, only that I want my meatspace life to be something else than my online life.

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Your bot could be anonymous, the only thing you'd be forced to reveal is that it was a bot.

just a [bot] marker of some kind next to the tweets that were posted by a bot. That's it. Still anonymous.

I could tell you this comment was posted by a bot, that would reveal nothing about me.

There's plenty you could have to hide as a user on HN. But what reason does a bot have to hide the fact that it's a bot?

Anonymity is fine, they were saying that bots should be labeled as bots.

But a bot isn't a person. And you don't have to reveal who made the bot, just that it's a bot. Can you give me a good use case for a bot that is not some kind of manipulation and would still benifit from humans not knowing it's a bot? Usually you want people to know so they aren't confused why the account acts werid i.e. unhuman.

I don't see how "I am a bot, beep boop" is a privacy issue.

You people and your absolutes. Nobody is saying that every anon is deceitful and untrustworthy- just that you need to make sure your BS detector is working.

> privacy doesn't work like that

Except we aren't discussing private conversations. We are discussing broadcast conversations on twitter.

Without tying your anonymity to something else (whether it’s another anonymous account or a real world identity) it’s impossible to determine whether you want to deceive or not, no?

In any case real identities have been a failure anyway

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